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Now that the papacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is behind us, it is worth not only assessing his papacy but also the papacy itself. While conservative Catholics criticized Francis’ doctrinal ambiguity, his watered-down moral teaching, and his support for compromised prelates, it is only fair to ask ourselves what his motivations were. I think they can be summed up in his rejection of the mozzetta…

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The Catholic Church stands once again at the cusp of a pivotal historical moment: a conclave looms; and the Chair of St. Peter, the most enduring office of spiritual and sociopolitical authority in the world and in history, awaits its next successor. This isn’t just another election. It is, rather, a watershed moment in salvation history, culture, and Catholic identity. In every era…

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The president envisions an expanded facility to house the “dregs of society”

US President Donald Trump has said he plans to revive Alcatraz Island’s historic role as a maximum-security federal penitentiary.

The US requires a place for the “dregs of society,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Sunday, as his deportation initiatives continue to face opposition in the courts.

Originally constructed as a military fortress off the coast of San Francisco, Alcatraz served as a correctional facility for nearly 30 years before its closure over six decades ago, subsequently transforming into a popular tourist destination.

Trump said he had instructed the Department of Justice “to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

“We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally,” Trump proclaimed, describing the impending conversion as a “symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.”

Having campaigned for the presidency with a promise to deport illegal migrants, Trump has encountered resistance from the courts, which interpret his administration’s procedures as violations of due process rights.

Positioned in a remote location around 2km off the Californian coast, Alcatraz – often referred to as “the Rock” – is notorious for its supposed inescapability. Of 36 inmates who attempted to flee, none were confirmed to have succeeded, though five remain listed as “missing and presumed drowned.”

The structure atop the island was initially erected in the 1850s as a military citadel to safeguard San Francisco Bay. The Department of Justice assumed control in 1933, utilizing it as a prison until 1963. The culturally significant landmark, regarded as a symbol of governmental pushback against rampant crime in the early 20th century, was eventually deemed too expensive to maintain compared to similar facilities.

Today, Alcatraz stands as a designated National Historic Landmark, attracting over a million visitors annually, with the National Park Service overseeing its management. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district includes the island, dismissed Trump’s announcement as “not a serious one.”

Later in the day, the president told journalists that reopening the prison was “just an idea I’ve had.”

But the Blues collapse is connected to the pope thing. I offer up my extreme bitterness in exchange for the conclave.

Silly? Maybe. I don’t care.

Bitter

Francesca Albanese has insisted the bloc official as well top diplomat Kaja Kallas “will have to be judged“

The EU leadership should be held accountable for supporting Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese has said.

In an interview with The Intercept published on Saturday, Albanese singled out European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas.

“The fact that the two highest figures of the EU continue business-as-usual engagements with Israel is beyond deplorable,” she said.

“I’m not someone who says, ‘History will judge them’ – they will have to be judged before then. And they will have to understand that immunity cannot equate with impunity,” the UN expert added.

Albanese said she has been working on a report exposing the role of institutions and organizations – including banks, pension funds, tech companies, and universities – in crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza.

“All those implicated and involved in the unlawful occupation, in providing it with support, are aiding and abetting violations of international law and human rights violations, and a number of these amount to crimes,” Albanese said. “There can be individual responsibility and individual liability for those who have been aiding and abetting or enabling such crimes.”

Albanese has repeatedly urged von der Leyen to use her powers as head of the EU executive to stop the “genocide” in Gaza. She also criticized Kallas for not pressuring Israel to end its military operation during her visit to Tel Aviv in March, when the diplomat said “both sides lose” in the conflict.

“A shocking low for the EU: one of its top leaders stands with Israel’s foreign minister, representing a state responsible for killing 50,000 people (in 16 months), 70% women and children, with Western-made weapons,” Albanese wrote on X at the time.

The UN official claimed she and her family have faced death threats since she released a report in March 2024, insisting that Israel’s actions should be classified as genocide.

European Commission spokeswoman Gioia Franchellucci told The Intercept that Brussels was committed to international law, and that the bloc’s relationship with Israel allows officials to express their “positions and concerns.”

“The association agreement with Israel is the legal basis of our ongoing dialogue with the Israeli authorities, and it provides mechanisms to discuss issues and advance our points of view,” the spokeswoman said.

West Jerusalem launched its operation in Gaza following a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, during which militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took around 250 hostages. Over 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict broke out, according to the enclave’s health authorities.

Recent polarized battles over education draw attention to an underlying problem: the persistent orientation of teacher preparation programs toward relativism and away from truth. Teacher education should affirm objective reality and reject critical and relativist frameworks, including the Marxist-materialist worldviews that have been so rampant in recent decades. Personalist philosophy offers a compelling alternative to critical and subjectivist philosophies of education through its consistent articulation of the dignity and value of the human person.

Traditional preparation for teachers, who need state certification or licensure in most situations, generally involves university coursework and assessments like licensure examinations. This coursework should incorporate current theories of human development, family engagement, instruction, and pedagogy. Often, the coursework in such programs reproduces less rigorous versions of critical theory without encouraging or requiring future teachers to grapple with the philosophical implications of that theory. Treatment in education programs may lack the theoretical orientation of a true critical approach, replacing primary readings from Foucault and Fanon with classroom-based examples. But teacher candidates are still left to piece together on their own the relationship between critical approaches and generally accepted principles of logic and reason.

For example, putting Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a staple in teacher preparation programs, into practice does not simply mean that lessons must be relevant and fun. (That position, incidentally, is not supported by evidence.) Rather, truly operationalizing Pedagogy of the Oppressed would involve pushing students to question the foundations of the current social order, interrogate authority, and embrace liberation even when it leads to revolution. It would demand that teachers prioritize alternative ways of knowing over principles of reason or evidence. Does the average teacher candidate understand the implication of those ideas when Freirian pedagogy is referenced? To understand the full implications and context of this thought might require a semester in an advanced political science seminar or, at minimum, acknowledgment that critical consciousness cannot be neatly put on a bulletin board.

Further, such preparation encourages teacher candidates to prioritize perceptions and feelings over reality. For example, one recent monograph opposing evidence-based reading instruction absurdly  references the need for a “full and complementary satchel of . . . epistemologies.” Existing subjective paradigms emphasize the impossibility of consistent beliefs or truths. Such approaches reject the idea of evidence on which our scientific system is based, promoting “spiritual, social, and story-centered forms of knowledge” and “what Sandra Harding has called a strong objectivity that is reached with an eschewing of objectivity . . . and rather, a deep subjectivity.” 

If we pull any thread of this subjectivist tapestry, it becomes easy to unravel the idea of reality itself. If all knowledge is socially constructed, then on what basis or by what authority does a teacher claim to provide any direction? What is the consistent principle we can use to mark any answer wrong if the student’s interpretation already aligns with his or her “lived experience”? It is, of course, easy to overgeneralize; helping students understand the real world often involves pushing them to reflect on personal experience. But taken to extremes, this thinking makes it impossible to prioritize truth and objectivity over feelings and experience. We see real-life downsides of this approach in mathematics curricula that prioritize “equity” and making students “feel heard” as well as in the controversy over balanced literacy, which led to generations of children who thought they could read because they “felt like” readers. 

Critical theory–based approaches to teacher preparation are also rooted in materialist thinking, positioning students as cogs in a vast system of oppressive machinery that can be disrupted only through activism and political awakening. In this telling, the only way out is further adoption of a critical consciousness lens in order to organize and advocate social change to promote a specific ideological agenda. Social justice–oriented approaches feel helpful to educators insofar as they provide a vocabulary to discuss pressing problems such as poverty and discrimination. The worst excesses of industrialization and modernity—abuse of workers, world wars, and genocides—highlight shortcomings of our systems. But conceptualizing problems as political issues, rather than educational ones, leads us to search for political solutions in lieu of educational ones. Eliminating oppression necessarily requires “confronting the ideological frameworks, historical legacies, and institutional . . . practices” contributing to inequality.

According to one researcher, in social justice–oriented teacher preparation, teacher educators (that is, those who educate future teachers) 

actively interact with the local sociopolitical context, . . . [disrupt] power relations in the classroom, . . . [and] challenge Eurocentric epistemologies by valuing lived experience, bodies, and practitioner knowledge in constructing knowledge. 

Teacher educators prioritize this perspective, seeking a “shared, explicit, and consistent focus on teaching for social justice.” And teachers are further encouraged to move away from the objectivity required in scientific paradigms; according to one study, “[t]o teach for social justice involves shifting out of neutral, both in terms of a teacher’s orientation to social inequalities and of pedagogy.” There is little room in such framing for educators to seek truth through apolitical, ideologically neutral examination of achievement gaps and adoption of evidence-based practices. 

Given the shortcomings of these common approaches to educator preparation, how should we prepare teachers instead, and what are the appropriate philosophical starting points for educators who believe in any kind of objective reality? These are important questions for teacher education programs but also for the field at large. One place to start is with the belief that some things are true and some things can be known—in other words, with thoughtful assent to the idea of objective reality. This includes acknowledging the epistemological tensions involved in the embrace of critical theory. It also involves a robust review of theories of knowledge and epistemology rather than the surface-level treatment of Piaget and Dewey that “foundations of education” courses often involve.

This conceptual orientation can and should lead to a renewed emphasis on rigorous research, including cognitive theory, developmental psychology, and the nature of evidence. In education, it is no longer a given that a large experimental or quasi-experimental study is the best way to identify effective practices. Rather, many researchers give equal or greater primacy to subjective analysis, narrative, first-person accounts, and descriptions of phenomena. While valuable to frame initial questions and guide exploration, these methods, by definition, cannot provide widely generalizable information about techniques or interventions that are effective at scale. 

However, a renewed emphasis on objective reality and evidence may still suffer from a lack of a unifying philosophical framework. Teaching, a work that is deeply individual and relational, can best be understood in a framework that acknowledges the problems of our current society and bases solutions on individual dignity, more than conceptualization of overbearing and oppressive social structures. To meet this need, our field would be well served by a theoretical reorientation toward personalism, the philosophical movement oriented around the nature and dignity of the human person, rather than Marxism or a variant of critical materialism. Personalist thought has been around for centuries and was developed and expanded in the twentieth century. It is widely associated with Christian thinkers, including the late Pope John Paul II as well as Jacques Maritain, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. But the core idea of personalism—an emphasis on the primacy, dignity, and integrity of the human person—has applicability and value in secular contexts as well, and serves as a coherent and valuable organizing principle for educational theory and teacher education in particular.

As scholar Bennet Gilbert writes: 

Personalism always begins its analysis of reality with the person at the centre of consciousness, to which it attaches the most profound worth. Some versions develop this through ontology or metaphysics; some, through theologies associated with most denominations of the Abrahamic religions; and some, through the intersubjective and communitarian nature of human life.

Personalist thought offers a powerful means of prioritizing humans’ well-being and development as a way to realize their authentic potential, based on their human nature. Scholars such as Margarita Mooney Clayton have explored the value of such approaches in education, in terms of both our relationships with students and our way of conceptualizing teaching. Personalist thought has relevance even beyond the religious, as there is value in starting with the student and family as the unit of analysis rather than an ideological construct or social class–related variable.  

In teaching, we should position the person, and his or her intrinsic value, at the center of any analysis, and the well-being and development of the person should be our aim from a practical as well as intellectual perspective. Critics of empiricism, and of the overly reductive reliance on metrics that sometimes accompanies empirical approaches, can find value in the idea that metrics and data themselves should not be the end. Rather, they have value because they help us reach an important goal: the well-being and development of our students. Personalism provides a powerful antidote, also, to critical, Marxist and materialist approaches, which reduce students’ individualism by focusing on slivers of identity or their membership in a collective class or identity-based group. Common educational practices, from student discipline and conduct proceedings to individualized special education planning, take on new significance when we place the dignity and integrity of the person at the center. In fact, in some educational fields, we already focus on the importance of the individual person; special educators routinely use a practice called person-centered planning in helping students with disabilities transition toward college, employment, or other adult services.

There is ample room in the field for both theoretical and practical work that explores the dignity and integrity of the human person as a foundational concept in teacher preparation. A foundation in human rights and the dignity of the person also allows for thoughtful consideration of how best to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse society, allowing for honest and thoughtful examination of our society’s shortcomings. Such an orientation allows for thoughtful treatment of disability rights, cultural and language diversity, and diversity of beliefs and viewpoints. It also allows educators to conceptualize human rights and dignity in a way that values individualism rather than defining the self through membership in various identity-based groups. 

This shift requires reorienting our teacher education curriculum away from critical pedagogies to provide a stronger foundation in philosophy and ethics, with an emphasis on the nature and value of the person. Continued reliance on data and evidence can ensure our pedagogy and interventions are grounded in reality and truth, geared toward human flourishing rather than ideological agendas. Family engagement, in a personalist paradigm, takes on new significance, as families play an important role in nurturing children and advocating for their needs. And a personalist perspective will push us to reimagine and improve many common “equity-based” practices, which risk reducing students to representatives of a given ethnic, language, ability-based or gender group rather than seeing them as unique individuals.

Reorienting our teacher education systems around personalism is no quick fix, given conflicts with existing licensure requirements, textbooks, professional development frameworks, P–12 curriculum and pedagogical approaches, and so on. But by doing so, we can reorient teachers and schools toward an authentic valuing of human dignity and relationships, justify and deepen our use of evidence, and continue to strengthen the way that teachers and schools engage with families, individuals, and society. We owe it to future and current teachers, and the students and families they serve, to begin such work. By doing so, we can equip them to navigate our era’s challenges and serve their students’ needs while grounding their practice in objective reality and discernible truth. 

Patricia Rice Doran is professor and chair of the special education department at Towson University and a parent of six. She writes in her personal capacity here; her views are her own. 

Image by littleny and licensed via Adobe Stock.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed House Bill 388, known as the CARE Act, into law on Friday, a move hailed by pro-life advocates as a vital step in safeguarding pregnancy centers that offer life-affirming support to women and families.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, prohibits state and local officials from discriminating against pregnancy centers for not providing or promoting killing babies in abortions.

It also shields these centers from regulations that could hinder their mission to provide counseling, resources, and care to pregnant women.

“Many women seeking abortions say they’d prefer to choose life if they had more support. While pregnancy centers can fulfill that need, they face real and growing threats,” said Denise Burke, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom.

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She added:

“Thankfully, the CARE Act prohibits state and local officials from discriminating against pregnancy centers simply because they do not provide, counsel in favor of, or refer for abortion. It also ensures that pregnancy centers can continue to provide meaningful, life-affirming care to women, families, and the communities they serve. ADF commends Rep. Amy Regier, Sen. Sue Vinton, Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, and the Montana Legislature for their leadership, and Gov. Gianforte for signing the CARE Act into law. We are also deeply grateful to the Montana Family Foundation for their work on this bill and many others that promote a pro-family, pro-freedom culture in the state. By protecting pregnancy centers, we affirm the dignity of women and prioritize the physical, emotional health, and well-being of the woman, her baby, and the family.”

The CARE Act, which passed the Montana Legislature with strong Republican support, ensures that the state’s approximately 20 pregnancy centers can continue operating without fear of targeted restrictions. Pro-life groups, including the Montana Family Foundation, celebrated the law as a victory for women and unborn children.

The signing comes amid ongoing debates over abortion in Montana, where abortion remains legal under a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling.

The post Montana Governor Signs Bill Protecting Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a victory for the pro-life movement, Washington state lawmakers have slashed $8.5 million from the state’s Abortion Access Project, marking the largest cut to abortion funding in the state’s history.

The decision, finalized on April 26, is being hailed by pro-life advocates as a critical step toward protecting unborn children.

The Democratic-controlled Senate and House approved a biennial budget that reduced funding for the Abortion Access Project by 55%, a program that has paid for killing babies in abortions since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

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Pro-life advocates argue that the program’s funding has enabled a culture of death, pointing to a 2025 New York Times investigation that exposed operational issues at some Planned Parenthood clinics as evidence of mismanagement in the abortion industry.

The budget takes effect July 1, and pro-life groups are already mobilizing to build on this momentum. Some are advocating for increased funding for crisis pregnancy centers, which offer counseling, ultrasounds, and material support to women facing unplanned pregnancies.

The budget cut comes at a pivotal moment in Washington, where pro-life advocates have raised alarms over recent legislation that pushes the boundaries of abortion extremism. Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers passed a bill critics argue effectively legalizes infanticide by loosening oversight on late-term abortions and perinatal care.

Signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson, the measure has galvanized pro-life activists, who see the funding cut as a counterbalance to the state’s increasingly pro-abortion tact.

The post Washington State Cuts $8.5 Million From Abortion Program, Babies Will be Saved appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a quiet but significant shift, Canada’s pro-life movement is celebrating gains in Parliament after the recent election, even as the country reaffirmed leadership under a prime minister openly committed to expanding abortion services.

Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, a Catholic who publicly dissents from Church teaching on abortion, secured a minority government in the April 29 federal election. Carney made headlines during the campaign by declaring his “absolute” and “unreserved” support for abortion rights, promising continued federal funding for abortion services and subsidies for in vitro fertilization, The B.C. Catholic reported.

But in a quieter political current, dozens of candidates supported by the pro-life advocacy group Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) saw success at the polls.

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“We congratulate and celebrate the 42 pro-life candidates whom we green-lit and who were elected,” said CLC President Jeff Gunnarson, according to The B.C. Catholic. Among them were six newly elected members of Parliament. All pro-life incumbents were also re-elected.

While both major parties took explicitly pro-abortion stances — Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre pledged not to introduce any abortion restrictions — CLC emphasized the importance of focusing on individual candidates.

According to The B.C. Catholic, in the lead-up to the election, Canada’s Catholic bishops issued a pastoral reminder about the moral gravity of life issues. The bishops pointed to growing concerns around Canada’s expanding assisted suicide regime — referred to as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

Bishop William McGrattan, head of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, warned of the country’s drift toward legal norms that violate human dignity. He called out what he described as a troubling “disconnect” among Catholic politicians who publicly distance their policies from Church teaching.

Carney largely avoided the assisted MAiD debate during his campaign, while Poilievre took a neutral stance, saying he would neither restrict nor broaden access. That silence drew criticism from CLC, which accused both leaders of ignoring what it called “the most important election in decades” for issues of life and conscience.

Gunnarson sharply criticized the incoming Liberal government for promoting policies that “turned Canada into a death machine,” affecting not only the unborn but also the elderly, sick, and disabled.

CLC also blamed Poilievre’s defeat on the Conservative Party’s failure to draw moral distinctions from its rivals.

“This proves, once again, that trying to appear more pro-abortion and pro-LGBT than the Libs doesn’t win elections for the Conservative Party,” said Jack Fonseca, CLC’s director of political operations. “Failure to distinguish from the Liberals on moral issues results in electoral failure, every time.”

LifeNews Note: Rachel Quackenbush writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Pro-Life Candidates Gained Ground in Canada Even Though PM Mark Carney is Pro-Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Right-wing candidate George Simion is leading in the polls with more than 40% of the votes

George Simion, a critic of the EU who has been banned from entering Ukraine, won the first round of the rerun of the Romanian presidential election on Sunday.

With more than 95% of the ballots counted, Simion, the leader of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), received 40.52% of the votes, according to the news website G4 Media.

Former Senator Crin Antonescu and Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, both known for their pro-EU views, each received a little over 20%.

“This is not just an electoral victory, it is a victory of Romanian dignity. It is the victory of those who have not lost hope, of those who still believe in Romania, a free, respected, sovereign country,” Simion said after the exit polls were published, according to Reuters.

The vote took place after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of the election held in November, in which independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu received 23% of the votes.

The court cited “irregularities” in Georgescu’s campaign, as well as intelligence reports claiming that the Kremlin had meddled in the election. Moscow rejected these claims of interference at the time as “anti-Russia hysteria.”

In March, the Central Electoral Bureau barred Georgescu from running again, citing his alleged “anti-democratic” and “extremist” stance, as well as a failure to comply with electoral procedures.

On Sunday, Georgescu and Simion arrived at a polling station together. “We are here with a single mission: to restore constitutional order and democracy,” Simion told reporters.

In November 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that Simion had been blacklisted for his “systematic anti-Ukrainian activities, which contradict the national interests of Ukraine and violate its state sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Simion argued that he was targeted because of his “promotion of historical truth” among the Romanian minority in western Ukraine. He was also banned from entering neighboring Moldova, which he labeled “an artificial country” that “will never join the European Union.”

Simion has opposed the delivery of weapons to Kiev. “We will not send military aid to Ukraine, and that doesn’t make us pro-Russian,” he told reporters last year.

He has also criticized EU bureaucrats. “The EU is a remarkable project that brought peace to Europe after centuries of war, but Brussels has become a greedy and corrupt bubble,” according to the politician.

The Russian foreign minister told Islamabad that Moscow is ready to assist in mediating if both countries agree

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has discussed the escalation of tensions between Islamabad and New Delhi in a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Lavrov expressed Moscow’s willingness to support peaceful efforts to ease the tensions. “The Russian side emphasized its readiness to assist in the political resolution of the situation that arose after the April 22 terrorist attack in the Pahalgam area, if there is mutual interest from Islamabad and New Delhi,” the ministry said. The statement added that the call took place at Pakistan’s request. 

On Saturday, Lavrov spoke to his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar. According to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov urged “a settlement of disagreements between New Delhi and Islamabad by political and diplomatic means” on a bilateral basis in accordance with the provisions of the 1972 Simla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration, which are historical frameworks under which the two South Asian countries previously agreed to resolve disputes diplomatically.

According to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, during the call Dar rejected India’s “baseless allegations and inflammatory rhetoric against Pakistan” and condemned New Delhi’s “illegal move” to hold the water treaty in abeyance.” 

The nuclear-armed neighbors have witnessed a sharp nosedive in already strained ties after a terrorist attack in southern Kashmir left 26 civilians dead. The terrorist attack occurred in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam in India’s Jammu and Kashmir union territory on April 22.  

Following the attack, India took a series of measures against the neighboring country, including expelling some Pakistani diplomats, cancelling visas of Pakistani citizens, and closing the land border. It also suspended parts of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty that governs water sharing with Pakistan. On Saturday, New Delhi announced a set of further measures aimed at downgrading already severed trade ties with Pakistan. 

Pakistan has responded with its own countermeasures and warned of further escalation. Islamabad last week claimed that it has “credible intelligence” that India intends to launch military action against it, and has said it is prepared to respond. The two countries have reportedly exchanged gunfire for ten consecutive nights along the Line of Control in Kashmir. 

India has accused Pakistan of supporting the militant group allegedly behind the Kashmir attack, reiterating its long-standing claim that Islamabad supports cross-border terrorism and uses terrorism as a tool. 

Islamabad has denied India’s claims. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has claimed that his country itself was a victim of terrorism in the region stemming from the policies of Western governments, particularly the US, tracing back decades, starting with the Soviet-Afghanistan war in the late 1980s. The minister admitted his country had previously done “dirty work” by “training and indoctrinating jihadists on behalf of the West.” He, however, called it a mistake and said Pakistan now bears the consequences of previous policies.